It has been a common practice in the welding machine industry to build welding machines with custom tooling as an integral part of the welding machine. In this practice, each machine is dedicated to the manufacture of a particular part and is not useable for manufacture of other parts. The working area of such a dedicated machine includes an attached assembly of fixtures and tools specifically made, located and adjusted to produce the parts to which the machine is dedicated. The entire machine, from heavy frame to built-in precision fixtures is treated as capital equipment on the financial books of the purchaser. When the parts produced by the dedicated machine are no longer needed, the entire machine is generally scrapped.
Previously, there had been a longstanding need in the industry to overcome the disadvantages which accompany the practice of using dedicated welding machines such as the economic loss from scrapping the entire machine when the tools and fixtures are no longer usable because of wear and tear or because of termination of production of the part to which the machine is dedicated. Solutions to this problem are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,271,496 and 6,512,195. These patents disclose electric welding machines that have base operating machines that can accept different tooling modules so that only the tooling module and not the entire welding machine can be replaced when switching between different welding programs or operations.